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Pioneer Comic-Book Artist Lily Renee: A  Nonagenarian Heroine

8/19/2017

5 Comments

 
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    Lily Renée at 96: A Truly Courageous Comic Book Heroine
By Sharon Rosen Leib
At age 17, Lily Renée Wilheim Phillips boarded a train with other Eastern European Jewish children fleeing the Nazis.  Her Austrian parents sent her on this Kindertransport rescue mission in 1939, hoping to save their precious only child by arranging for her to live with strangers in England.
            Like the real-life action heroines she later inked as a comic book artist, Lily used her wits and determination to survive as a refugee.  She gave her all to British efforts to defeat Germany while she tried, to no avail, to get her mother and father out of Austria.  After England formally declared war on Germany, her parents’ letters ceased. She feared the worst -- the Nazis had murdered them.
            Unbeknownst to Lily, her parents managed to escape and make their way to New York. After they tracked Lily down in England, she sailed across the Atlantic on one of the last refugee boats out in 1941—and met her parents at New York harbor.
            Lily and her parents had lived a charmed life in Vienna as part of the highly cultured city's Jewish aristocracy. Lily's father Rudolph earned a handsome salary as an executive at the Holland America Line, one of Europe's finest shipping companies. "My mother was a homemaker who always dressed beautifully and took exquisite care of me," Lily recalled. As a young girl, Lily benefitted from the best education money could buy — including art and ballet classes and trips to the famed opera house and esteemed art museums.      
            Their New York lifestyle was nothing like Vienna. The family lived on a tight budget in their cramped one-room apartment. When Lily's mother spotted an opening for a relatively well-paying job as a comic book illustrator, she encouraged her to apply.  “But comic books?” Lily wondered.  She had never read one. Her mother bought a couple of the stapled newsprint books for 10 cents a piece.  After perusing them, Lily drew some samples. 
Her mother’s modest investment paid off. The editor at comic books' publisher Fiction House liked what he saw - both Lily's striking physical beauty (she worked as a part-time fashion model) and her detailed drawings.  At age 19, Lily became Fiction House's first female employee. She blazed a trail in a frat house-like young men's world. 
            Lily drew on her reserve of will and strength to survive her co-workers' leering stares, vulgar remarks and crude drawings of naked women in the margins of their comic galleys.  "I felt like they were undressing me with their eyes.  I came home and cried most nights," she said.  But she persisted and became one of Fiction House's most popular artists, drawing under the pseudonym L. Renée.  "I got fan mail from readers who assumed I was a man," she said.
     Lily “penciled and inked" strong, Nazi-busting women who became her alter-egos. She breathed vivid life into Jane Martin, a raven-haired female pilot who carpet-bombed Nazis in her khaki combat jumpsuit by day and entertained comrades wearing her couture floor-length evening gowns by night. Lily’s most famous heroine, Señorita Rio, used a Brazilian nightclub singer gig to cover her role as a counterspy fighting Nazis in South America. Lily drew the Señorita like a stylized self-portrait.  Her wavy dark hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones bear a striking resemblance to Lily in her youth. The glamorous Señorita donned a leopard-skin coat, stiletto heels and drop-pearl earrings to outsmart her targets. “I always dressed my heroines better than the men did,” Lily said.
      Now the 96-year-old matriarch of a prosperous American family living in New York and Southern California, Lily exudes the quiet strength, wily sophistication and dignity befitting a true action heroine. Her immense, bright blue eyes sparkle with ironic wit when discussing her late-in-life fame as a woman pioneer of comics' Golden Age. She continues to appreciate the au courant fashion and elegant decor that made her a sought-after comic book artist.
 Long after she shelved her comic book pencils and inking pens in 1949 to raise her family and pursue other creative projects, fans still consider Lily one of the best in the business. The once-privileged Viennese Jewish girl put her childhood art lessons to practical use in a challenging new world by wielding her pens to make good money.  In the process, she drew powerful women with high-European style and thus elevated an American pop-culture art form. Wow! Pow! While Lily’s fictional creations busted the Nazis, she established a hard-hitting legacy of her own as a true comic book heroine.
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5 Comments
Yesenia
8/22/2017 07:41:22 pm

Hi Sharon!

I am so deeply impressed by the impact of your first sentence. the way you describe Lily Renee is amazing! I love the way you describe who she is in the first paragraph. powerful yet to the point. your second short paragraph, however, has an air of finality to it, especially when you mention the fans of the comics. I might move this down as part of your conclusion.

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Yesenia Padilla
8/29/2017 01:25:09 pm

Hi Sharon!

The detail in this piece is so good! you do a great job leading us through the details of her early life, and setting up the context for how Lily Renee grew to be such a graceful and intelligent woman. Did you change the first paragraph? I really liked your original first paragraph, I hope you decide to keep it! I would love to hear more about the ways in which the characters became her alter-egos: how did they embody characteristics she had? how did they embody traits she aspired to? how did she see herself, having escaped the holocaust, and her Jewish identity in these characters?

I am really excited to see the finished piece; I told my comics-loving Jewish boyfriend about Lily Renee and your project and now he's SUPER into learning all about her!!

Great work!

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Yesenia
9/5/2017 01:07:12 pm

Hi Sharon:

What an amazing piece! it has great narrative flow, and the anecdotes you use are great. your description is great, however at times it feels a little bit weighty. The opening sentence of your 8th paragraph was a bit too long, and could've been simplified. I also think that in certain spaces, one adjective can do far more work than two. For example, your sentence "Her immense, bright blue eyes sparkle with ironic wit" could be much punchier if left "Her bright blue eyes sparkle" etc.

Make sure you're beginning new paragraphs after you add a speaking quote.

I really hope you pitch this somewhere; it's so good, and deserves to be in print!

It's been a joy being in class with you, I hope our paths will cross again!

Tuktuki Bhattacharya
8/29/2017 12:23:14 pm

Sharon writes a feature story of Pioneer Comic book artist Lily Renee Wilheim. I appreciate Wonderful opening line, fact base writing, and description is superb, everyone has a story to tell, I like the way how Sharon Explore her background and struggle.
At the beginning we see art in this writing, that the art is quite beautiful, a reader who doesn't know much more about Lily has an idea of her work.We see a photograph of the real Lily embedded in the story. There’s an image of Lily (who, for the record, may have been one of the world’s more beautiful women) but imagine how powerful she is !the fascinating story we’re reading here actually happened to a real person.Sharon expertly handles emotion.

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Tuktuki Bhattacharya
9/5/2017 02:30:22 pm

Eagerly waiting to read your finishing part of your feature story .your analyzing and developing the story that interesting.You painted the entire life of Pioneer comic book artist with our words.
‘’Lily drew on her reserve of will and strength to survive her co-workers' leering stares, vulgar remarks and crude drawings of naked women in the margins of their comic galleys. "I felt like they were undressing me with their eyes. I came home and cried most nights," she said. But she persisted and became one of Fiction House's most popular artists, drawing under the pseudonym L. Renée. "I got fan mail from readers who assumed I was a man," she said’’.
What a description!!your style is superb because of description.Step by step enters into the detailing; story never becomes monotonous.You introduce all incidents of Lili’s life in a clear and straightway, that is the best part of your writing. You should send this to any reputed media house.Best wishes always to you.

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